VI’s Christmas Consumer Index continues this week with a focus on the build-up to Black Friday. With inflation accelerating to a 41-year high of 11.1%, will retailers adapt to the targeted discretionary spending of its consumers? 

One brand which leans heavily on Black Friday sales is John Lewis, who launched their Black Friday deals at the start of November. Utilizing the top performing major city centre from our weekly footfall benchmarks below, this week’s spotlight will be on John Lewis’ Cardiff location

14th – 21st November


WEEKLY SPOTLIGHT

JOHN LEWIS – CARDIFF

One brand which usually leans heavy on Black Friday deals is John Lewis, who launched their Black Friday deals at the start of November. As a brand, John Lewis saw YoY visits decrease by 46% last week, in a trend mirrored across Department Stores as seen in our weekly benchmark. Despite this, visits have been on an upward trend throughout 2022 and they are on track to exceed the 690,000 visits to its stores seen in December 2021. Aside from a notably weak festive period in 2020, John Lewis averages around 700,000 visits to its stores in December.

John Lewis’ Cardiff store performed particularly well this week, experiencing a 33% YoY increase in visits. This is above the trend for the local market, with Cardiff seeing an 26% YoY rise (as discussed in our benchmarking section). Interestingly, dwell time has remained stable at 44 minutes – is this to be expected of consumers who are budgeting and spending intentionally?

Consumers are also visiting John Lewis Cardiff more frequently. Last week, of those that visited John Lewis Cardiff, 41% of them visited on a quarterly basis. This far exceeds 23% visiting regularly in 2021 and demonstrates a huge change in shopping habits post-pandemic. Just 6% and 2% were visiting on a quarterly basis in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

John Lewis’ chair this week warned that consumers were starting to budget however were still spending money in their stores. They will hope that this year’s Black Friday push will help entice consumers into stores – and there is some encouraging data to suggest that might be the case.